Horses shot after being left to starve

A pet food business owner left horses in his care to starve before shooting two in front of an SPCA inspector and slitting the throat of another.

Nicholas Pacey was sentenced to two months’ community detention, ordered to pay $527 in reparation and disqualified from owning horses for four years when he appeared in the Christchurch District Court on Thursday on charges of failing to provide for the physical health and behavioural needs of three horses.

The horses in the care of Pacey, director of Nick’s Petfood Ltd, were found ‘‘reduced to skeletons’’ and deprived of veterinary care when SPCA inspectors visited his property.

Pacey told an inspector that horses were ‘‘mongrels’’ and people dropped them at his property for him to ‘‘deal with’’.

The SPCA described the horses found on his South Island property as being in a state of ‘‘exhaustion, weakness, debility, hunger, thirst, pain and physical discomfort’’.

A bay thoroughbred mare in ‘‘good health’’ was delivered to Pacey’s family in November 2020 to be euthanised and turned into pet food. However, four months later a member of the public contacted the SPCA after seeing the horse ‘‘thrashing around’’ on the ground in serious distress.

The horse was unable to stand, and an area of her body was dry and hairless from rubbing on the ground, the SPCA said.

The inspector discovered three other horses on the property, one of which appeared healthy, while two others were ‘‘thin’’ and ‘‘emaciated’’. The surrounding grass had been chewed down to the dirt, and there was no sign of other food.

A vet was called to check the horses, but in the meantime Pacey returned to the property and shot dead the two emaciated horses on the spot, despite the SPCA inspector urging him not to.

After examining the horses, the vet found they were in need of medical care and should have been euthanised days, if not weeks, earlier.

The SPCA launched a prosecution and an investigation against Pacey. However, in July 2021, the SPCA along with police and a vet were called to the property again, after a person suspected that a horse’s throat had been cut.

Pacey insisted that the horse was no longer on the property, the SPCA said. However, the inspectors found the starved horse lying by a large deep pit with a cut throat as they were leaving.

Chief executive Andrea Midgen said the treatment of the horses was ‘‘despicable’’, and images of the ‘‘poor horses’’ were ‘‘sickening’’.

‘‘It never ceases to amaze me how some people don’t seem to understand that animals feel pain just like we do – these horses would have been scared, starving, in pain and distress,’’ Midgen said.

‘‘Humans have a responsibility when it comes to the treatment of animals and to ensure their wellbeing, before being humanely euthanised. Letting them suffer and starve like this is beyond disgusting.’’